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travelabulous is Feeling Pretty Real This Week

This week has been a big one for travelabulous – and it is only Tuesday!

Although we started back in October, registered as a corporation in Canada and Ontario in November, and took our story to many influencers, friends, trusted advisors and potential investors in December and earlier this month – this week feels real. We have started in GrindSpaceXL, a startup accelerator here in Ottawa. We are really proud to be part of this program. It means a lot to us to try our best to keep this in Ottawa and avoid the siren song of accelerators in bigger cities with more money (and less ice!).

GrindSpace Graffiti Wall at Invest Ottawa

Masha and I – along with our group of advisors and our silent partner – are really excited about disrupting the online travel industry. This is an industry that is badly in need of a shake up. More importantly, travellers really need a better solution for travel planning.

We have literally talked to hundreds of people and the same basic story resonates over and over again. Why is travel planning so painful? Why don’t sites even attempt to remember what I care about? Why has no site filled that gap of the “old style” travel agents who knew me and made recommendations based on what I like?

The answers to these questions are complicated and likely non-obvious. (At least they weren’t to me before we started!)

I hope to explore these and related topics throughout this year as we move towards product launch. And, we want as much feedback and as many travel planning stories – both good and bad – as we can possibly collect.

For now let me leave you with our view. Maybe this could go as far as our mission.

At travelabulous, we know that travel gives you some of the best memories of your life even though planning travel is tedious and time-consuming. Our goal is to provide you with an online and mobile personal travel concierge – to make sure you start enjoying your travel experience even before you begin to pack.